Due to the pervasiveness of social media and the ease with which users are able to upload images, users are increasingly finding situations where duplicate photos have been uploaded to a social media platform by two different users. Existing methods for detecting duplicate photos are computationally expensive and not scalable to multi-uses scenarios. Additionally, a social media participant may be concerned with “watering down” their image or losing social media interactions to one or more other users who have posted the same photo as the participant.
As an example, assume that Julie posts a photo on Facebook™ and “tags” her mother and father in the photo. A tag refers to a label that a user attaches to someone or something in the photo for the purpose of identification or to impart other information. For instance, a tag may comprise a first name or a nickname for a person depicted in the photo. Not realizing that Julie has posted the photo already, Julie's mother also posts the same photo and tags Julie. Julie's mother also tags Julie's father. Julie's father also posts and tags this photo, not realizing that his wife and his daughter have already posted the same photo. Julie and her parents have many shared friends who are now seeing this same photo showing up in their personal feeds three different times for the three separate posts. Each of the three identical photos is associated with a different set of social interactions such as comments and “likes”. The “like” is a Facebook™ feature that allows users to show their support for specific content such as comments, photos, or posts, without having to post their own written comment. After a user “likes” something, their news feed is updated, letting their friends know what content they “like.”